Cambodia

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CAMBODIA

Helaine and I spent 5 days in Siem Reap exploring the Khmer ruins of Angkor and taking a boat trip through the floating villages on the “great lake” of Cambodia - the Tonle Sap. We both wished we had allotted more time to explore other parts of the country. I want to return and take the overland trip or the boat trip on the Tonle Sap river between Siem Riep and Phnom Penh. Like most other tourists, we came to see the world-famous ruins of the former Khmer empire, but also to catch a glimpse of life thirty years after the reign of the Khmer Rouge. In Vietnam we were shocked at how quickly the memory of its turbulent past seemed to have receded in the face of booming tourism and an expanding economy. Cambodia felt very different. From the moment we stepped from the plane, there was a noticeable pall over the surroundings, even in the touristy destination of Siem Reap. Helaine and I both noticed it immediately. Every person we met was eerily subdued, in extreme contrast to Thailand, where we had just spent a week. Although people would flash a brief smile to say hello or attempt a sale, immediately afterwards they would slip back into an expression of complete solemnity. We had read about the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge, but witnessing the ineffable effect on the collective psyche of a country thirty years later was a revelation.

This provided an oddly sobering backdrop for exploring arguably the most amazing ruins in the world. I hadn’t felt this sense of awe for human endeavor since visiting the Inca ruins of Macchu Picchu. We spent four days visiting various temples, including the famed Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and Ta Prohm, among others. While the sheer size of these temples and mausoleums is staggering, it is the intricate details etched in the hundreds of thousands of blocks of stone that truly intimate the audacity of the undertakings. It is difficult to contemplate the incredible amount of manpower and skill that went into the construction of these edifices. Our guide told us that the ancient city of Angkor Thom alone had almost 100,000 workers dedicated to its construction. Each successive king of the Khmer Empire seemed determined to outdo his predecessor, as they alternated between practicing Buddhism and Hinduism. This unique blend of architecture and ornamentation is one of the most interesting facets of many of the ruins. In some places the temples are a complete blend of styles, with bas-releifs on one wall depicting battles from the Ramayana, while around the corner sit life-size statues of the Buddha. In the ancient temple of Bayon, inside Angkor Thom, the images on the bas-reliefs alternated between depictions of daily life and battle scenes between the Khmers and the Chams, who originated in central Vietnam. We had visited one of the Cham museums while in Danang. Bayon was also the site of the massive stone faces of Avolokiteshvara (bodhisattva of compassion). Of course the faces are also said to resemble the king responsible for their creation - Jayavarman VII. Each of the visages consist of numerous intricately carved blocks of stone; in certain places you can stand in one spot and see 8 to 10 of these remarkably human faces at a time. At each of the entrances to Angkor Thom is a tower adorned with 4 of these facing in each of the cardinal directions. Wondering amongst these in the numerous passageways of Bayon was the highlight of all of the Angkor ruins for me.

We arrived at Angkor Wat one evening just before a huge rainstorm and watched bizarre cylindrical grey clouds sweep over the ruins. Inside the main gates we marveled at a few of the thousands of depictions of the famed Apsaras (Khmer dancers) on the walls and then watched several bright orange-clad monks wandering around this predominantly Hindu shrine. On another day we visited the citadel of the women, Banteay Srei, a Hindu temple with amazingly ornate detail in uncharacteristic red sandstone. We also spent a morning at Ta Prohm, one of the most commonly photographed sets of ruins in the area. It a jumble of a temple with massive stones split and shattered in various places by the snaking roots of massive trees.

After spending a few days visiting ruins in the mornings and evenings (avoiding the brutal heat of midday), on our last day we visited Tonle Sap lake, which at this time of year is about 20 or 30 minutes outside of town. This is known as the “great lake”, and it is easy to recognize why, in terms of size and importance. During the rainy season it covers a vast expanse of the area around Siem Riep, in many places at only a depth of only a few feet. The lake feeds into the Tonle Sap River, which flows down to the capital city of Phnom Penh, where it meets the mighty Mekong on its path from the Tibetan highlands down to the South China Sea. When the Mekong’s waters reach their zenith around Phnom Penh, the massive surge causes the Tonle Sap to reverse its course and send its brimming waters flowing back towards its source in the north. The expanding waters of the lake irrigate rice fields for miles around, and when the waters recede, people scoop up fish from the thousands of remaining puddles.

The Cambodian rainy season was just around the corner as we arrived in mid-May, and people were busy preparing their rice fields for the oncoming floods. We drove to a canal where we loaded onto a small boat explore a larger part of the lake in order to see the floating villages. Helaine and I had visitied the floating villages of the Aymara people on Lake Titicaca in Peru, and while in Vietnam, we saw a few of the homes on Halong Bay, but these were much more expansive. On the channel leading to the lake, we saw several floating schools and glanced through the windows at the uniform-clad children busy at their lessons. We even saw a floating basketball court, and I was curious how far it would drift once the waters began to rise. Within 20 minutes we reached the wider expanse of the lake and the main section of floating villages in the area. There we watched two adolescent boys playing billiards aboard a barge with three pool tables, and we saw a small boat manned by three children under the age of 10 pass by. The homes were nothing more than ramshackle wooden boats, often with shoddy wooden platforms attached for the family pig or a tiny vegetable plot. We visited a crocodile and fish farm, where we were accosted by a young girl with a huge python of some sort wrapped around her neck. She approached standing at the bow of a longboat with this massive serpent intertwining her arms and neck and a nasty scowl on her face. Helaine and I nearly leapt off the back side of our boat when she tried to step on board. Of course behind her sat her mother, paddling her child around as a circus spectacle to gather money from passing tourists. We had seen this phenomenon with touts in so many places we had traveled in Asia, though it's hardly endemic to this continent. On one hand, I recognize it as opportunism springing from a level of desperation and poverty that we can't comprehend, but it seems a horrible idea to support this practice. Giving money to this serpent-handling Cambodian girl would only encourage her Mom to continue exploiting her child, and I can't ignore the selfish fact that it creates a horrible environment for visitors in the meantime.

The abject poverty was perhaps the most striking thing about these villages as well as the areas we passed on our drive towards the lake. As we boated along the river leading into the lake, we watched a family of three wading along scouring for detritus washed up along the shore. Life in the straw shacks along the road adjacent to the lake reeked of desperation. Our guide once again emphasized the complete disparity in health, education and incomes between the cities and the countryside. Throughout our trip, he showed a genuine concern for people in his country who were less fortunate than him, and he was by no means wealthy himself. He had joined with other guides to start a small-scale well-building project in outlying areas, where a lack of clean water leads to widespread diseases such as cholera. After inquired more about the project, he brought us pictures of the last family he had helped. They seemed ecstatic, each beaming as they took turns pumping their newly built well.

He also took us to visit a small orphanage near Angkor Wat, where we talked to a British man who had been working there for several years. This four-room affair housed around 50 orphans. It was much more of a shoestring enterprise than the orphanage we had visited in central Vietnam, but it seemed to be making strides for the children with better health, education and job opportunities. It was heartening to see the kids reading, playing with volunteers and taking classes in the adjacent room. In just a brief snapshot their cares and concerns seemed little different than the kids in a normal day care center in the U.S. That is hardly the case. But it at least served as a reminder that given a span of peace and a little assistance, youth and time will eventually erase the remaining vestiges of a horrific past, even one as devastating as the reign of the Khmer Rouge.

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